Black conservatism and the lie of the Democratic ideological switch

Democratic liberalism claims a traditional ascendancy over the political identity of blacks, but it is false; it is anchored in a supposed ideological change of 1960, when Kennedy capitalized on the black vote, around Martin Luther King. That is, however, a false narrative, about a circumstantial episode, which did not even actively engage King; who until the last moment maintained his proverbial reticence, in the cultural pragmatism of the American black, naturally conservative.

First, this conservatism must be clarified, because it’s not exclusive to black culture but to culture in general; as a structure that organizes existence as a human being, therefore of existential rather than political value. For this reason, it even reproduces the thermodynamic principle, as morphodynamics, in the conservation of resources; already from that existential function, but even reaching the political expression, in which it is resolved as a historical reality.

The ideological conflict is then artificial and not organic, arising from the political determinism of Modernity; and which therefore responds to the positive rational reduction of politics, not to the reality of culture itself. It’s worth to mention that this notion of culture is that same meta-politic theoretics are looking now, because the insufficiency of dialectic; since reality can’t be reduced to its political expression, but have its determinations outside it, without being metaphysic. History is then trialectic rather than dialectic, imposing the objective circumstances over the subjectivism of economy; which never respond to universal categories, but to the punctuality of the individual and its own circumstances, as culture.

Hence the intrinsically conservative character of this North American black culture, due to its political marginality; in the conservation of its resources as existential, in the family, tradition, individual responsibility, etc.; in the face of which, the ideological organization results in a squandering of those resources, without any practical result. That is why every political investment, since Roosevelt's New Deal, stumbles upon this same black skepticism; which will only give way momentarily, when caught up in the existential political crossroads, such as that of Dr. King. This intertwines presidential candidate Kennedy's call to his wife Coreta, with his father's open commitment; as a concrete pressure, to which King's pragmatism yields, but not an ideological change of the party.

Of course, this is taken advantage of by the intellectualism of the Boule Movement, which is traditionally liberal; to the point of having sacrificed the autonomy of the Niagara Movement with Du Bois, to found the NAACP. This is the tradition that anchors the political identity of the American black to this manipulative sponsorship; as seen in the open field operation of the Black Lives Mater, always in an electoralist and democratic function; without, however, managing to transcend a really popular ascendant, in its middle-class pretensions.

Above that, the truth is that the liberal tradition loses its consistency of intellectual projection, already unsustainable; a third of a millennium since its triumphant postulation, when it has tried all its possibilities and only fails. Since then, the West has helplessly witnessed its structural desynchronization, in this growing inconsistency; by which the references, which made existence in culture possible, have been and continues to be lost.

The phenomenon is therefore deeper and more complex than this tension, compromising the existence of the black; because, even in an incredible paradox, it appeals to an emergent and apotheosic development of conservatism; not only in this political confrontation, but in this as an expression of that deeper phenomenon, in its determinations. This conservatism then becomes the spine of political culture, as believed even by the most liberal of the blacks; because it was W.E.B. Du Bois himself who postulated the conservation of this cultural singularity, in favor of the whole culture.

About te Ethnic Manipulation as Politics

The problem with political determinism is that it distorts the ontological function of culture, which is existential; in the provision of its determinations as ideology, which thus ceases to be existential, as properly political. Hence historical transcendentalism, in that sort of political romanticism, coming from the idealist tradition; appealing to an Arcadian communitarianism in primitive societies, which ignores the motive of the economic function.

However, reality is punctual and immediate, with a transcendence typical of its own immanent condition; which is even why it is reduced to historical from Dialectical Materialism, without still being able to avoid Manichaeism. That is the problem of racial vindication in historical transcendentalism, which is political rather than existential; appealing to a transcendence of the original culture, which is impossible after the trauma of its economic redeterminations; which in the specifically African case, include a high political component, in the restructuring of society.

The most serious problem here would be that political romanticism, responding to the political fiction of ideology; as an artificial and not organic tension, in the crisis of European absolutism, which gave rise to the modern revolution. It is not for nothing then the centrality of the French contradiction, crawling even through German ideology; to redetermine the cultural structure from the epistemology of its idealist tradition, with dialectics as a canon.

That is already dysfunctional, in its very epistemological nature, reducing reality to its dichotomous tensions; postulated as well as its very political determination, when politics is only the expression in which it is realized; not its determination, which as ontological is structural, and therefore comes from culture, not from society. That is what distortion consists of, which subordinates the individual to the Kantian imperative, ordering that idealist tradition; in a redetermination that reduces the cosmological to ideological, and with it to the existential function as political.

Hence, all this is resolved as a moral question, and thus neoconservative, displacing the cultural functions; which, as we have already seen, go from being existential to political, subordinating the individual in transcendentalism. In turn, it comes from the Cartesian reversal, with its secularization of the religious problem, as moral instead of cosmological; not expressly but already on its epistemological basis, on which Kant later postulates his imperatives.

All this explains its purely Western nature, racially defined as te whiteness of all te contemporary conflicts; which are not merely political, although expressed as such, but ontologically determined in culture. Hence the falsity of those vindicationist archaisms, which manipulate racial tensions as political; when their determination is racially defined by their Europeanness, even if they are postulated as universal.

In fact, this claim to universality comes from Christian humanism, which is also European and academic; on the very basis of modern Enlightenmentism, culminating this distortion of culture in general, with that of European culture. Nevertheless, all this —even if artificial in its intellectualism— was possible because it was credible in its circumstance; and that would be what has changed in at least three hundred years since its apotheosis, with the postmodern crisis of culture.

The problem, however, is one of whites, among whites and for whites, who only manipulate racial tension; making profits even after slavery has been abolished, with the same displacement of the political function; that goes from economic, with the industrial boom, to properly political, in the expression with which society is carried out. Not for nothing, manipulation crosses the intellectually specialized elites, assuming the representation of the popular; which is possible only in the convention of historical transcendentalism, lacking existential consistency.

Whatever happened to neoliberalism!

In the first place, it was not liberal but neoconservative, and that is the problem with paradoxes, they are misleading; especially in this case, in which the bourgeoisie tried to surpass its own intelligence, only to deceive itself. The problem of neoliberalism was in the feudal nature of Modernity, contained by democratic conventions; because the contribution of Modernity was the moderation —not the overcoming— of medieval structures, with those conventions.

That is what explains the relativity of modern democracy, without it becoming unhinged —as it could have been— in anarchy; contained in the authoritarian elitism of modern intellectuals, not in the access of the popular class to power. These intellectuals were also fed by a dissident aristocracy, which they legitimized in their populism; and this was the ideological development of liberalism, legitimizing sovereignty in the people instead of in God; but also marginalizing that people who legitimized it from effective power, because of their alleged intellectual incapacity.

This explains populism, because the revolution is never popular but populist, in another of those political turns; but more importantly, it explains the surreptitious growth of the middle class, to that apotheosis of intellectual excellence. After all, as a parameter of culture, it is also a parameter of cultural mediocrity, in more of those paradoxical twists; giving meaning to that professionalization that distorts the economy with technocracy, displacing pragmatism.

That is what wounded the bourgeoisie, the betrayal of an aristocracy too authoritarian to become bourgeois; unlike in England, where he aristocracy was too strong to allow that trickery to the Monarchy in its own authority. That is why absolutism was so relative in England, without allowing its monarchy the political excesses of France; for there is no such thing as history, but the peculiar developments that organize culture.

So the problem with neoliberalism was not its bourgeois nature, but its political decharacterization as a class; for which it agreed to rely in the business schools of the universities —oh, intellectualism!—, instead of in real practice. That would be why it ends up subordinating productivity to planning, in the corporate culture of the political; and thus ending up like the political, wearing down its own material base in theorical projections, like socialism.

This decapitalization may not be theoretically visible, dissolved as it is in the growing inflation of the economy; with the devaluation of wages, which moves their value to the profit of investors, in an apparent increase of productivity. This would have been the kind of trick with which Louis XVI's finance minister financed American independence; but at the expense of the solvency of that same monarchy, and which he ended up blaming for its waste, as it still does.

It is also true that there is no such thing as a socialist economy, but a state capitalism, as a corporate culture; which is the Leninist distortion of Marxism, facing its own failure to create an effective economic alternative. In this regard, Necker's trick was not precisely this apparent productivity, but the budget against debt; but what is at issue is the technocratic character of these tricks, reducing intelligence to sleight of hand.

Neoliberalism was thus the last bourgeois offensive, but a bourgeoisie already weakened in its lack of character; that committed it to the technocracy of modern politicians, too mediocre to be effective in their intellectualism. In reality, neoliberalism would have been the alternative to socialism, in the face of the inevitable death of Soviet communism; appropriating the technocratic structure of political corporatism, with the inefficiency of classical empires; from the moral rhetoric of meritocracy, as false as it was authoritarian, but as irrational as the feudal aristocracy never was.

So neoliberalism was so weakened that no one noticed its death, under the siege of surreptitious socialism; so weak that it cannot fail to lead to anarchy, paradoxically from a classical conservatism, not real liberalism. That makes sense, as an effort to preserve political resources, after the cultural debacle of rationalism; which is anthropological, pushing the whole of Western civilization into the abyss, with that blind faith in platonic elitism.

 

About the issue of Afro-Hispanic review dedicated to Georgina Herrera

Almost four years after her death, The Afro-Hispanic Review dedicates a thematic issue to Georgina Herrera; and the delay may — but is not known — due to the tense negotiation over its questionable legitimacy. The number was planned at the very moment of his death, and I was invited to participate by Juana María Cordones, who was a guest editor; but which I conditioned on the exclusion of Roberto Zurbano —for reasons that everyone should know—, to which she refused.

Neither the reluctance of the invitation nor the refusal are important, because they are banal and subjective; but the appearance of this number points to an appeasement, even more offensive than the original offense. I did not condition my participation on Zurbano's exclusion out of arrogance, but because of his disrespect and opportunism; and the fact that they excluded him without renewing my invitation, speaks of that arrogance and opportunism on themselves, and of cowardice and weakness.

It is not a struggle between two mediocrities, but about Georgina Herrera's ascendance in her motherhood; usurped —or pretended— by Zurbano in his manipulations, on the negrerismo of the North American universities. Put like this, they could even made him the guest editor, since the offense is even greater, if Herrera's son is excluded; it does not matter the reason, beyond the irresponsible hypocrisy with which her motherhood is spoken of and praised.

Right here Zurbano is mentioned, as the origin of the outrage to Georgina Herrera, so it is clear that it is about dignity; something that has been unknown to that magazine, with that arrogance of French aristocrats at the end of the eighteenth century. That explains the naturalness, with which they spend public money on patting each other, while they continue to exploit blacks; ignoring in this also the dignity of those who do not need them, because they do not live on another people's money.

They had alternatives for this number, which at least would have saved their face, in a situation that deserved care; even if they had had to take the fief from the white master, and there is no black person —from Vanderbilt to Puerto Rico— who dares to do so much. That, even more than the personal, is what hurts about this slamming door, as a weakness of a race incapable of dignifying itself; in proof that nothing has changed, but only that they have increased the payroll of foremen and butlers.

In fact, and as is typical of racial behavior, this number does not even do justice to Georgina Herrera; because it ignores its importance, more axial than anecdotal, in the determination of the black cosmos in Cuba. That, which occurs in the intense power of her poetry, is mostly manipulated as a poetics of resistance; that hides in it the existential scope, with which it reorganizes the Cuban ethos, in its true dimension.

Too many important people have collaborated in that number, and no one knows the conditions or why they did it; the good will of some is enough not to go around offending them all, in what would be an act of unforgivable vanity. However, to those who do know that they acted with duplicity and cowardice, it only remains to lament the poverty and pettiness; if they are so transcendentalists, they should know that this is what will remain of them, the arrogance and ignorance they exhibit.

Nor should nobody exhaust the limits of love, no matter how immense, because it always dries up in the inconsistency; and that would be irreparable, after having grown only from faith and the memory of a distant past. It is not strange that this is done by Cuban cultural institutionalism, to which this thoughtless arrogance is natural; but it is sad that American universities —which use public money— accompanied them like this, into the abyss of that vulgarity.

How Olódùmarè is effectively God

The problem with religious syncretism is its approach from opposites, even based on the same presupposition; which is wrong, trying to preserve religious structures in their purity, not in their functionality. For essentialism it is corruption, and for relativism it is an indiscriminate mixture of unrelated elements; and both positions assume that religions are definite phenomena, not functional systems in continuous adjustment.

But it is this continuous adjustment what gives consistency to the religious phenomenon, as its existential function; which is to regulate the relations of the concrete person with reality, in the reflection of its formal determinations. Hence, syncretism is precisely the development of this phenomenon, as an adjustment of this relationship; whose function is then ontological —and therefore structural—, relating functions of that reality, including the religious person.

So this is not a question of concrete religious identities, but of those functions of reality, conventionally represented; and where, for example, the Abrahamic God is not a figure essentially distinct from other supreme divinities. The difference would then lie not in their metaphysical nature, but in their different representations by the culture; and whose differences are in fact functional, marking that difference of their respective representations.

In that same example, the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition develops in highly institutionalized cultures; where representation fulfills a regulative function of the political and economic order, not merely existential. On the other hand, Olódùmarè belongs to a cosmology where this function is not representable, invokable or personified; that is, it is not subject to representation, because its culture has not developed that conventional institutionalization; so that their representation admits non-conceptual figures, and therefore alien to the logic of human hierarchies.

This contrast, however, is not an absolute opposition to Western rationality, but a functional difference; since this representation is not exclusive to Greek rationalism, but a consequence of its institutionality. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, religion already contracted from its double function, of infra and super-structural, to super-structural; with the political tension on the figure of the prince-priest, in which the former assumes the administration of trade and tribute.

From this transition arises the need for a conventional representation, which allows the management of the divine; in that super-structural function in which it organizes the instituted order, with culture as a transcendent identity. In this context, the equivalence between principles of different traditions is not ignorance or reductionism; rather, it is a structural operation, in which functions are translated, from one hermeneutical spectrum to another; and where hermeneutics is precisely cosmology, as a reflection of the transcendent determinations of the real.

What is thus at stake is not identity nor the names, but the function they fulfill in the cosmological system; in which Olódùmarè is "the vastness that knows the mystery", and God "the creative principle that orders the world". The equivalence does not lie in their respective attributes, but in their position in the ontological structure of culture; and in which syncretism does not fuse Olódùmarè with God out of naivety, but out of structural necessity; since what is at stake is to sustain a cosmology, whose very function is in fact existential and not religious; because the function of religion is existential, as that regulation of the relationships in which reality structures itself.

Thus, syncretism is not a symbolic negotiation, but a structure of survival, which resolves the function of the divine; and it can be said that the critics of syncretism respond even to that determination that they deny, in their representation; since, they must recognize that reductive representation of the divinity as of absolute value, not only epistemic. Thus, syncretism must be understood as an ontological reflection, of functional equivalences, that preserves religious structures; and does this subsuming them in other forms, for their validity lies in the functions they fulfill, organizing the relationships with the reality.

Problems of American Blackness 2/2

In the same sense, the political development of the black American southeast, would tend towards a form of socialism; which, weakened by corporate aggressiveness in economy, will be unsustainable like the African empires to which it appeals. These formations will thus be progressively impoverished, due to the typical unproductiveness of the political model; aggravated by the elephantiasis —also typical— of government structures, as guarantors of economic order.

Although for different reasons, this foreseeable development would be that of cases such as Haiti and Cuba; which respond to the structural weakness of sub-Saharan petty imperialism, due to its dependence on a strong personalities. That would be inevitable, due to its origin on the margins of the West culture, rather than in an effective African centrality; as emporiums of political power, in the growing weakness of the Western structure, with its progressive decadence.

This precariousness is what resembles American blackness, to that Germanic expansion in the Roman decadence; but as a process extended in time, which in Europe was only consolidated in the ninth century, with Charlemagne. In the United States, as the modern culmination of medieval chaos, the nature of the conflict is not warlike but economic; making development more imperceptible, in a political expression that transcends the ideological; but for the same reason it has more effective possibilities —than in Haiti and Cuba, for example—, in its religious nature.

What marks the violent evolution of the European Middle Ages would be the claim of universality of Christianity; which, interfering with secular power, exceeds the infrastructural capacity of local cultures. In the United States that is not the problem, but the weakness of this pretension of its political structure, as liberal; which is therefore resolved in the infrastructural function of the local churches, which is parochial and not transnational.

In the same sense, the conflict seems confessional in principle, like that of the early Lutheran Reformation; but it differs in that it is interdenominational —between Baptists and Methodists— and non-jurisdictional, by its political practices. This conflict would develop surreptitiously, due to the political commitment of the so-called African Methodism; as an instrument of ideological liberalism, in a functionally conservative community, such as the black one. This would be solved with the slow migration —hence the surreptitiousness— from the Methodist to the Baptist church; by the latter's appeal to family culture —rather than to the protection of the state— in its functional conservatism; different from the liberal, as practical and not ideological, in the appeal to its existential resources, given its political precariousness.

However, that will only condition the development, which is favorable to the ideological projection of Methodism; because of its conjunction with government protection, reminiscent of the populist absolutism of Louis XIV in France; respect to which it is more efficient, materializing in a state of well-being, paid for with the public debt. Nevertheless, this will make it possible for alternative structures to emerge, in the face of the problem of unproductivity; that will end up undermining the effective scope of that state of well-being, thus surpassed as infrastructure.

To solve this, Americans would have to turn to their own history, but factual and not ancestral; that is, to find their references in their own historical singularity, which transcends African origin. An example would be the ambiguity of the indigenous wars, which in the Seminole case are also known as black; because of that North American ethnogamous peculiarity, by which blacks share with Indians the path of tears.

However, this approach —as existential rather than political— would be pragmatic and not transcendentalist; hermeneutically detaching itself from the liberal tradition, which sponsors it with its own historical reference, as ideology. Hence those contradictions that prevent the consolidation of a local black culture, in transcendentalism; with the conditioning of the past, which they will partially deny, based on their own founding myth.

An example of this denial would be the historic participation of African political structures in the slave trade; as a contradiction that would separates them from the origin they claim, making it inconsistent as a political expression. Another example would be that of the same appeal to the exceptions, and in general to the Mediterranean area; by which they cannot access the resources of the original tribal organization, such as that of geronto democracy and matrilineality.

Problems of American Blackness 1/2

The problem of blackness in the United States is identity —or lack thereof—, supplemented with its references to Africa; which provides the bases but not the structure of that identity, and much less can it resolve its determinations. It is not that this projection takes place in a vacuum, since it has a basis in the very culture of the American Southeast; whose segregationism is not only political but also due to the swampy geography of the eastern islands; resulting in a kind of New Africa, due to the isolation of the plantations, which made syncretism difficult. However, this will still be insufficient, since it still depends on the negativity of segregation, whatever its cause; not allowing the practical consistency —as positivity— of some economy, even primary, as in the Seminole case.

This is why its expression, as a culture, consists of a political projection instead of an existential one, as an ideology; with the positivist and romantic rational nature of the idealist tradition, which it shares with the liberalism that sponsors it. The problem with this is the artificiality of that liberalism, which actually acts a functional conservatism; since it consists of a vigilance over the individual, to whom it subordinates the community, in that historical transcendentalism.

In the opposite direction, cultures tend towards the same transcendentalism, but they are adequate by their tribal infrastructure; which limits that political determinism with its own cultural consistency, in the power of the family as a private space. Elements such as matrilineality, in the very infrastructural function of the clan, are limits to this transcendentalism; that ignores them in the political conventions proper to the West, such as the community or the common good.

These are values attributed to African primitivism, but never superimposed to its basic tribal infrastructure; but they do constitute in the West its very structure, with its natural reduction of culture to that political determinism. That, for example, was the case with Christianity, when it over imposed itself to tribalism, with the crown of Carlo Magno; as the moment the West culture lost its existential object, in crisis since the imperial efforts of Julio Cesar. It's for a reason that these values reach their conceptual excellence in the West, with figures such as Kant and Descartes; but in a development that starts from the very basis of that transcendentalism, from Platonic to Neoplatonic uranism; which then organized in Christianity, prepares the war debacle with which the West arrives at Modernity to end.

In African tribal primitivism, on the other hand, culture cannot lose its existential function, not even in this determinism; which, lacking sufficient infrastructure, collapses the phenomenon in its very formation, before its apotheosis. This is the case of all the empires in the sub-Saharan area, with the exceptions of Sudan, Ethiopia and Mali, for example; which are explained in their contamination by the influence of Mediterranean culture, including the religious element (Mali). In Congo, on the other hand, like Oyó in Nigeria and Dahomey, this structure cannot survive its own contradictions; because its inability to go beyond tribal organization —as domestic—, resolved in matrilineality.

The references of North American blackness to a primitive African communism would try to make up for this lack; already in that historical and transcendentalist projection of political determinism, but in a conceptual ambiguity. In this sense, they come to legitimize themselves in the exceptionality of the great imperialism, not in the tribal regularity; to which they nevertheless appeal in their ideological function, despite its direct contradiction of exceptional imperialism.

The contradiction is logical, due to the special nature of this political projection, as an ideology rather than culture; by not being on behalf of the popular class, but of an intellectual elite, formed in that patronage by political liberalism. The best example of this case would perhaps be that of W.E.B. Du Bois, probably the most outstanding personality in that segment; but because of its contradiction with black leadership in its popular origin, with figures such as Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglas.

To be continued